The James Comey Book – Be Afraid, Very Afraid (6 min read)

James Comey, the former director of the FBI, recently published his account of working under the Trump administration in the book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership”. It’s the second high-profile book of the workings of the Trump administration – the other being Michael Wolf’s “Fire and Fury”. That was revealing in parts, and Comey’s book is also revealing, though not in the way many reviewers have focused on. Continue reading “The James Comey Book – Be Afraid, Very Afraid (6 min read)”

21 Must-Read Articles From Around the Web From Blockchain Bubbles to Chinese Values

I’m constantly scouring the web for good material to read and here’s my latest curated list:

Big Brother

Life Inside China’s Social Credit Laboratory Yikes. China has started to quantify people’s trustworthiness based on their “behaviour”. They then get a social credit score which determines their movements and services they can access. Continue reading “21 Must-Read Articles From Around the Web From Blockchain Bubbles to Chinese Values”

What I Tell Young Researchers (3 min read)

Having  been a researcher for many many years, I’ve picked up lots of useful tips and tricks to produce good research. Most I’ve been given by others, so I equally like to share everything I’ve learned to all the newbies in my research team. Below is the list I give (and it can useful for non-researchers too): Continue reading “What I Tell Young Researchers (3 min read)”

5 Life Hacks From Religion

In today’s world, especially in Western Europe, religion can often be viewed negatively. Religion is thought of as irrational, polarising and not equipped for the modern world. Yet for many around the world, religion remains central to their lives. Whatever one’s thoughts about religion, what is true is that religion has survived in various guises for thousands of years and across hundreds of cultures today. Given this, there must be something within religions that provide time-tested practical benefits to people. From my exposure to various multiple religions, I’ve identified 5 practises that all religions seem to share and persists to this day. One could call these the 5 “eternal” life hacks…. Continue reading “5 Life Hacks From Religion”

Overcoming Fake News – Welcome To the Reputation Age (3 min read)

From the Establishment Age to the Information Age

Fake news, social media manipulation, government propaganda – the list goes on, so who do we now trust to understand the “truth”. In the old days, it was enough that it came from a reputable organisation like a top university (say Harvard or Cambridge), government body (say the FDA or UN) or large media company (say the BBC or NY Times). The internet and perhaps more importantly the social media era disrupted that. Continue reading “Overcoming Fake News – Welcome To the Reputation Age (3 min read)”

How Tomatoes Could Be Killing Us!

Have you ever wondered why tomatoes look so perfect and never seem to rot? Well, it’s largely thanks to large dosages of herbicides, like glyphosates, which zap all the bacteria and bugs that could gnaw away on the tomato and also the narrow breeding of varieties of tomatoes that last on trucks that transport them across the world. Moreover, there has a recent trend to grow more tomatoes in “soil-less” glass houses, which further distance the tomato from the messiness of nature. Continue reading “How Tomatoes Could Be Killing Us!”

Are You Obedient To Authority? (3 min read)

The Set-Up

In a chilling experiment conducted in the early 1960s, Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram set out to understand why Nazi soldiers followed orders to murder millions. The set-up of the experiment was clever. Members of the public would act as a teacher and test another supposed member of the public, the learner, on simple word association tests. A scientist, the experimenter, would oversee this.

The teacher was told by the experimenter to impart successively larger electric shocks to the learner when they made errors – the voltage started at 15V and would go up to 450V. Continue reading “Are You Obedient To Authority? (3 min read)”

The Sins Of Isaac Newton (3 min read)

In Western society, there is a common narrative around the history of science and religion. It argues that we were on the right track of rationality and science with the classical Greeks like Plato and Socrates. Then we had a long dark ages where superstition and religion dominated. But from around the 1500s we got back on track with the Renaissance  with figures like Da Vinci, Galileo and Isaac Newton. Continue reading “The Sins Of Isaac Newton (3 min read)”

My 5 Rules Of Love

Valentine’s Day is almost upon us, so it’s time to buy gifts for our loved ones. But we can also think more deeply about our relationships. I’ve being doing that and I’ve also asked others who have been in loving relationships for 20,30 or even 50 years. From these conversations, I’ve discovered the 5 golden rules of love!: Continue reading “My 5 Rules Of Love”